Fine-tune Your Marketing With Social Media Ads

Author: Megan Braverman | August 21, 2013

As social media continues to grow in popularity, so do social media ads. Facebook ads began several years ago with the launch of Marketplace, which allowed users to post free classified ads. Shortly after, both Facebook and LinkedIn gave users the option to place paid ads. Many times, website ads can be a shot in the dark, because you are never certain who is seeing the ads or if it’s your right target market.

What differentiates social media ads on Facebook and LinkedIn from general advertising (and what makes them so effective) is that they use the information in users’ profiles, e.g., where they live, what they like, etc., to target niche demographics. Targeting your audience by job title and function, industry and size, geography and more, allows you to obtain targeted leads that are of higher quality. Similarly, it raises awareness of your service or products among the audiences you want to be in front of.

Logging on to my LinkedIn, I see ads like “Spending too much on PPC?”, “Marketing Analytics Guides” and “Social Selling Ebook” – it’s clear they know what industry I am in and what may interest me.